The Burrowers (2008)
Evil will surface.
From the depths of the sea to the shallows of the plains. Tonight we settle for a western, but not just a normal everyday western - nah, that would be too easy. Tonight we ride into a pack of monsters that share the screen with the horrors of man. On this night, we pray for the sun - tonight we await The Burrowers.
This one is a western set movie - and I mean that in the sense of “wild west” and not just general western-globe sort of western. As such, it’s only fair that I warn you of more delicate sensibilities to expect that same period complications. What complications, you ask as though you don’t know what I mean? Well, you know, old-timey western folk were kinda racist as heck, in specific against the natives. Granted, this one does largely come off as the people being that way are butt-hat’s and not really heroes, and given the dynamic at the time was probably far worse then what’s portrayed in the movie, I don’t think it’s enough to really break watch-ability of the movie - but it is there for people that get super uppity about that sort of thing. I will note though, they do bring it around in a dark humor sort of way to really drive home the fact that racism ends up doing more damage then good.
The story here focuses on the mysterious disappearance of a couple families when a love struck farm hand happens upon a grizzly scene. A band sets off with a military escort to go find the culprits - assumed to be natives - and rescue the missing folks assumed captive, but it becomes apparent that the escort may be more of a narrow-minded hindrance than anything else. As the main party follows the trail of mysterious holes and the mention of a “burrower” tribe, it becomes apparent that they might be in over there head. Buried people, lethal misunderstandings, unsafe gun usage all come to a race against time finish against something that probably isn’t even human.
It’s a monster flick - and I know what your thinking already, and no it’s not just “wild west Tremors”. That’s already a thing (Tremors 4) and this one plays it’s cards much different. For starters, it tries to be far more serious about it - which in the sense of a horror movie is sort of nicer, but at the same time from a general enjoyment factor makes this drop in re-watchability in comparison. The wider span of distance it takes place in also accounts for more drops in pacing as we get some travel shots - it’s not really horrible in pacing because of it, but there’s a few moments where nothing is really happening and no tensions exist. The monsters themselves seem to be a bit conflicted in what they are at times as well - which also isn’t something monster movies are above, as most tend to have a hard time keeping their beasts on a flat level of power through the entire movie. It does work a bit in the movies favor then that the threat isn’t limited to just the monsters - misunderstandings between the natives and the cowfolk, uppity military egos clashing against more humane mentalities, and of course just the occasional distance or heat beating folks down some.
Ah the west, where everything was kind of sepia.
The actors do a pretty alright job here. For what it is, it doesn’t really feel like anyone is phoning in their performances, with the most outrageous being the ego-filled racist military leader, who really feels like a stereotype of what you expect the old west to have in it, up until it comes around to get you later on. The biggest parts of acting comes from our main experienced lead type, who gets to do a bunch of play from some goofy all the way through quite serious. The main backups - including the other lead, the Irish farm hand - also all do fine jobs of delivering their lines and acting it out without feeling dead, as well as interacting with each other pretty well.
Audio is done well, and there some noises you won’t even notice until a character calls it out (which is intentional I think). You never have a hard time hearing lines delivered - such that I ended up turning off subtitles and never missed a line. On the subtitle front however, I ran into some conflicts whenever a native would use that dialect and the hard-coded subtitles would appear behind a far less useful “speaks in native” subtitle, blocking your view of what they said. Good for immersion I suppose, as most the characters don’t speak the language, but a nuisance if you wanted to actually see what someone really said when a character instead responds with “they didn’t say anything.” I don’t remember any of the scoring in the background - so it’s certainly not as memorable as a spaghetti western, but I’m sure it was there doing it’s job of casually adding to the scenes without overpowering anything. There is a distinct different sound to one of the characters audio when inside a building towards the start - but outside of that it’s pretty even across the board.
As for the monsters themselves - the actual creature ones that is - they don’t look horrible. I mean, they look a bit goofy with their big seemingly toothless lamprey sucker-mouths and the back legs that are hinged in a such a manner that it sticks above their bodies when walking around. I certainly wouldn’t call them menacing - but they don’t look bad, there was still some budget and care put into it. Now, some slight spoilers here - but the things are essentially mole vampires. Part of my biggest complaint about uneven grounds of power is in regards to that - gun’s don’t really seem to bother them, getting run through with spikes won’t kill them - but for some reason it seems like they still care if they get shot, despite being effectively immortal against said weapons. Is it really a big deal? Not really, it just stood out to me that they weren’t really all that frightening after the first stand off with them results in the monsters being all “oh no, they are so inconvenient, fall back and let’s see if they fall asleep again!” The racism being a monster is a much more potent and level concept though, so it easily makes up for any complaint I would have against the people-soup sucking dirt vampires.
Sometimes less is more.
If you just want a western that something different, it’s not a horrible choice. It might not be anything for you to write home about and try to spread around and make everyone watch, but it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome and has a nice little surprise moral in there I didn’t expect. It’s also got a few solid lines in there that you could use for quote-fodder elsewhere, and that’s always an added bonus. Acting, effects, it’s all pretty level and well done, but if you just want a fun movie with monsters that pop out of the ground you’ll still be better off with Tremors.